Mombasa Day 1-a few hours after day one actually. lol

Today was a good/successful day. Despite having come to this class sans books and a power adapter for my laptop, I managed to photocopy a friend’s entire book as well as purchase a power cord for relatively cheap. I also paid for my new turntables! All of which were pretty exciting, not to mention the amazing/stomach filling meal that we had at Swahili Village, this nice restaurant by the beach right outside my room window….yeah my room has an awesome view..Actually, the entire apartment has an awesome view and cannot be compared to the place I stayed the previous summer in Uganda. I think they have better housing than we did this year though(green eyes)

Got my first reading(2 pages) nothing much BUT was also told that instead of learning Swahili I’d have to start on my research?? Walking around asking people where I can find poets/writers/readers of these and ask them a few questions related to  my senior paper-details of which shall be discussed in another sitting. I’m excited and quite obviously scared but we’ll see. I might go purchase a camera tomorrow just because it seems impossible to do this work without one. Hopefully it won’t cost much since buying my turntables was an unprecedented expense that messed up my budget.

About to get on that Portugal-Spain game. Here we watch it on a big projector screen with the rest of the Old Town football fans…quite an experience in itself. Let’s go Portugal! Let’s go!

Hoffman Vs Sageman on terrorism and book authoring…a real LOL.

Does Osama Still Call the Shots?
Debating the Containment of al Qaeda’s Leadership
By Marc Sageman and Bruce Hoffman

From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

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Summary: Debating whether the real terrorist threat is top-down or bottom-up.

Marc Sageman is Founder and Principal of Sageman Consulting LLC and Scholar in Residence at the New York City Police Department.

I am compelled to respond to Bruce Hoffman’s review essay, “The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism” (May/June 2008), in which he substantially misrepresents my new book, Leaderless Jihad, ignoring all of its main points while making up others that appear nowhere in it.

Most serious, Hoffman blatantly misrepresents my position on the status of al Qaeda’s central leadership. He writes, “Leaderless Jihad’s salient weakness is its insistence that this dimension [informal local terrorist groups] represents the entire threat facing the United States today.” He adds, “According to Sageman, al Qaeda has ceased to exist as either an organizational or an operational entity” and claims that “the grass-roots dimension … is Leaderless Jihad’s sole preoccupation.” Because he repeats this mischaracterization numerous times, the reader is seriously misled.

What the book actually says is that the threat from this core group is still substantial and will grow if vigilance is relaxed. I wrote, “Al Qaeda Central is of course not dead, but it is still contained operationally…. The surviving leaders of al Qaeda are undoubtedly still plotting to do harm to various countries in the world and have the expertise to do so, but they are hampered by the global security measures that have been put in place.” And one of my recommendations is that “the core group of people who comprise al Qaeda Central — those who have blood on their hands or are plotting against the United States — must be eliminated or captured and tried for their crimes.”

Hoffman portrays Leaderless Jihad as a simple-minded polemic and ignores the subtleties of its arguments. In the process, he neglects its main point, namely, that the threat from al Qaeda and its progeny has evolved over time. The process of radicalization is still going on but now proceeds in a hostile, post-9/11, wired environment, resulting in a social structure comprised of disconnected groups. The core of the book centers on my description of the four-pronged process of radicalization, which explains the difference between the terrorist threat in Europe and that in the United States. I show how the Internet has enabled a new wave of terrorist wannabes, who now constitute the main — but not the entire — threat to the West. However, this new wave has been completely neglected in recent analyses of terrorism; I can find no other source providing a comprehensive examination of this new phenomenon. This is why my book is focused more on the new than the old. Missing the evolution of the threat condemns us to keep fighting the last war.

Hoffman claims that homegrown, spontaneously self-organizing groups of friends who become terrorists are a “myth.” But this is completely at odds with the evidence found in trial transcripts from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, not to mention what I have heard from law enforcement agencies around the world during my extensive consultations with them. Even Hoffman acknowledges the importance of these “radicalized ‘bunches of guys’” in the last two sentences of his review, and our practical recommendations are not that far apart.

Disagreements among experts are the driving force of the scientific enterprise. However, science has some rules for settling such arguments. These rules do not condone taking quotes out of context and building a straw man through gross misrepresentation and then subjecting him to a hatchet job. Hoffman chastises me for lacking deference to authority, noting what he calls my “brusque dismissal of much of the existing academic literature.” I plead guilty to the charge. In science, the strength of the evidence should trump loyalty to authority. But far from dismissing work that is relevant, I engage with it. My book spends several pages, for example, carefully weighing Hoffman’s own argument that al Qaeda is on the march, only to come down against it on the basis of empirical evidence. And contrary to Hoffman’s implication that I ignore British exceptionalism, I deal with it explicitly and explain it.

Furthermore, although it is important to deal with the relevant literature, the real focus should be on empirical data. Hoffman likes to cite as evidence secondary sources and political statements (National Intelligence Estimate summaries, transcripts of congressional testimony, and the work of other experts). But there is no substitute for careful scrutiny of primary sources, field research, and analysis of court documents (in which suspected terrorists challenge government claims).

Hoffman acknowledges that the first chapter of my book is about methodology but later comments that my book “has a surprisingly curt discussion of methodology.” To learn from him, I looked for the section on methodology in his book Inside Terrorism — but there was none. Hoffman mistakenly characterizes my call for “middle-range analysis” as evidence that I favor “analyzing terrorism from an individual perspective rather than taking an organizational or collective approach.” This was a surprise to me, as both my books explicitly reject the individual perspective. In the field, my view of terrorism is known as the “bunch of guys” theory, and it is a collective perspective.

My work attempts a paradigm shift toward a new, evidence-based standard in terrorism research. Hoffman accurately quotes my description of much of the existing literature as amounting to “nothing more than arguments made for the sake of scoring political points.” His review is an excellent illustration of this practice.

HOFFMAN REPLIES

A book titled Leaderless Jihad would seem to explain itself. I was therefore both puzzled to read Marc Sageman’s statement that the threat posed by al Qaeda Central “is still substantial” and relieved to see that Sageman has finally recognized the continued danger posed by al Qaeda’s centralized command-and-control apparatus.

Three or four years ago, Sageman’s “bunch of guys” bottom-up thesis about the nature of the contemporary terrorist threat may have seemed compelling. Less was known then about the extent to which al Qaeda had regrouped and reorganized along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. But ever since the July 7, 2005, attacks in London and the plot to bomb airplanes over the Atlantic that was foiled in August 2006, evidence has continually come to light about al Qaeda Central’s top-down direction of these and other operations.

Rather than address such facts, however, Sageman claims that I have mischaracterized his work and selectively quoted him out of context. I have not. The book’s very first paragraph — exactly the place one would expect to find an author’s statement concerning the fundamental thesis of his work — argues that “the present threat has evolved from a structured group of al Qaeda masterminds, controlling vast resources and issuing commands, to a multitude of informal local groups,” and the rest of the book expands on that point.

As for methodology, Sageman writes in these pages that “in science, the strength of the evidence should trump loyalty to authority.” But he seems not to understand that science is cumulative. Sageman publicly shared his data on the “bunches of guys” he studied for his last book, Understanding Terror Networks, but he has not done the same with his data for Leaderless Jihad. The type of appendix that appeared in the first book, with the names of his subjects and brief biographies, is absent from the second. It is therefore impossible for a reader to determine if Sageman’s new evidence really is superior to other existing data. It is also curious that an author who rails in his book against scholars who supposedly rely on information from “mysterious sources — anonymous tips from the ‘intelligence community’ — that cannot be verified” defends himself by citing “what I have heard from law enforcement agencies around the world during my extensive consultations with them.”

Sageman alleges that my review of Leaderless Jihad was written “for the sake of scoring political points.” This is offensive and absurd. I have been arguing that al Qaeda is on the march, not on the run, for two years now — long before doing so was either fashionable or accepted wisdom inside the U.S. government or out. I reached this conclusion on the basis of empirical evidence indicating that al Qaeda Central had reconstituted itself in Pakistan’s tribal frontier areas and from that base was again actively directing and initiating international terrorist operations on a grand scale. This dispute is not about personalities or politics or recondite academic theories but about the true nature of the United States’ most pressing national security concerns. In such circumstances, the need for meticulous research and accurate analysis could not be greater.

Women in Nigeria-General Overview

Gender roles have increasingly become a hotly discussed topic across the globe. With the rise of feminists and humanitarian persons, advocacy for equitable distribution of amenities, facilities and benefits between men and women has been increasing exponentially. The sudden surge in feminist issues has compelled many societies, Nigerians inclusive, to examine their cultures, customs and ways especially with regard to the place of women in the society. Some communities in other countries in Africa have faced harsh reactions from the outside world as a result of resisting pressure to change some of their practices that are considered detrimental to women. A case in point is the Maasai of Kenya who for many years have practiced female circumcision and early forced marriage. Both practices demean women in the society and have faced harsh reactions from various parties. This paper seeks to examine briefly the place of women in the Nigerian society focusing mainly on the post-colonial period. Has Nigeria taken steps in the right direction with regard to female issues or does patriarchy still pervade the most populated country in Africa?

Traditional institutions designate roles to different members of the society based on sex, age and status in the community. Gender roles, were divided based on the assumption that women could not do what men could and in a way, the responsibilities designated to women were seemingly inferior and not to be carried out by a man. Cooking, cleaning and nursing the children were always the mother’s tasks. Men went out to plough, herd cattle and in the evening came back home expecting food on the table and later on a chat with other men. This culture has seemingly persisted in modern day Nigeria. A great disparity currently exists between men and women in various professions. There are significantly fewer female doctors, lawyers, engineers and even politicians compared to males. Some professions such as Engineering have for a long time been labeled male therefore discouraging many girls from enrolling in them. Moreover, professions such as teaching, sales and office administration seem to attract a significantly high number of females. Toyin Falola in Cultures and Customs of Nigeria confirms that indeed Nigerians do generally consider the latter two less prestigious occupations in comparison to the male dominated Engineering, Law and Medical professions.¹ When attaching titles to names, individuals tend to use terms such as Engineer so and so, Doctor so and so but never does anyone attach a profession such as Secretary in front of their names as it is considered an inferior profession. This trend of women’s greater prevalence in less prestigious jobs may be attributed to two factors. First, since women have always been expected to be the care givers of the family, they may not be in a position to handle the overwhelming responsibilities that come with professions such as being a doctor which demand a lot of commitment. There is therefore a tendency to move away from these professions since many women want to raise families and be there for their children. Secondly, female education has for a long time been considered unimportant and has only just recently kicked into full gear. Many communities in the rural areas still consider it more important to educate the male child rather than the female child as it is assumed that he is more likely to bring back benefits to the family.

Government policies seem to be engineered to downplay the place of women in the society. “The overall direction of these policies is the maintenance of the ideological assertion of women as mothers, housewives, helpmates to men, and peripheral workers².” According to the same article, in northern Nigeria, the government policy and ideology have been engineered to put women under constant check. “Continuing seclusion, assertion of control over the movement of young female hawkers, and periodic state-supported pogroms against independent women also demonstrate physical as well as ritual control and actual force exerted over women”² Moreover, girl boarding schools have been reintroduced while at the same time punitive abortion laws have been put in place with the intention of streamlining females in northern Nigeria. Similar policies do not exist for men; a clear signal of how the society in northern Nigeria treats their women.

Nigerian media has also been a platform for sending messages on how women are perceived in the Nigerian society today. A lot of the movies produced in Nigeria have a common theme of love that will have some element of juju (witchcraft) or traditional medicine involved. Women are portrayed in most films as prostitutes, at best courtesans, wily lovers and witches. Patrick J Ebewo, in his article The Emerging Video Film Industry in Nigeria writes, “This image of women as portrayed in Nigerian home video films cut across the country from North to South, though with differing intensity. The difference being that the rituals and murders, which occur in Southern films, do not yet appear in Northern movies. Still, women in the Northern films are not reflected any better; they are seen as greedy, fickle minded, weak, unable to make their own marital decisions and are available for purchase by the highest bidder.”³ Some films such as No Nonsense (2003) present women in a less stereotypical fashion but there is still a lot of improvement that needs to be made if the films are to delve out of the patriarchal social values they often seem to perpetuate.

Women in Nigeria also seem to be significantly marginalized politically. Traditionally, chiefs and kings were mostly male with women only achieving royal status after marrying either of the two. Currently, efforts to include women in government and administrative positions in Nigeria have been on the rise but still have a long way to go. According to data provided by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in January 2009, as of 2007, 8% of the Nigerian parliament comprised of women ranking Nigeria 118^th with regard to gender balance in parliament.⁴ As much as a significantly large amount of women do show up to vote, an equal ratio of women does not end up elected to government. This could be attributed to the fact that very few women do actually vie for parliamentary positions therefore providing very few options for the electorates. On the other hand, there is a possibility that women have not quite gained the trust of the electorates when it comes to matters of administration. This is mainly because women haven’t really had the opportunity to show their leadership capabilities in very high government positions until recently. All Nigerian presidents have been male and most of the cabinet ministers have been men.

The brief analysis of various Nigerian facets is evidence of the need to crank up efforts to ensure gender equality in Nigeria. A community of feminists from within Nigeria has since come up and taken leading roles in advocating for women rights. Hajara Usman is one such activist who cofounded BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights during which she advocated for women’s rights under Muslim, customary and statutory laws, trained activist among other things. Diana Wiwa is also another instrumental human rights activist who was a representative for the Federation of Ogoni Women Association.⁵ The government also recognizes the need for women in top level administration and as such, there have been about 5 out of 19 ministerial positions given to women in the current government. In an effort to promote female education, various scholarships have also been set up. These can be assumed to be Nigeria’s baby steps with regard to addressing the issue of gender equality and we can therefore anticipate even greater steps in the future. Gender equality in Nigeria will not be an easy battle. It will call for education of a large number of people who will be expected to make many sacrifices. It will also be up to women to realize that they are indeed empowered and able to do just as well in life as their male counterparts. In the meantime, a vast gap continues to persist between men and women in Nigeria.

References

¹ Culture and Customs of Nigeria, Toyin Falola Page: 139

² Women, Work and Ideology in Nigeria page: 3

³ The Emerging Video Film Industry in Nigeria, Patrick J Ebewo page: 48

⁴ Women in National Parliaments (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm)

⁵ Notable Women of Nigeria (http://www.motherlandnigeria.com/women.html)

Kenya,past to present-election violence

Kenya is a multiethnic country in Eastern Africa with approximately 35 million people from forty-two socio-cultural communities that inhabit different geographical areas in the country.³ Its capital is Nairobi, a diverse, multicultural and modern city with a population of more than 3.5 million people. Aside from Kenya being an ideal tourist destination (1.8 million tourists per year) and indeed the cradle of life, not much about it is known, as with many other African countries, has been said internationally. This has been the status quo until the 2007 political violence that resulted from election controversy over who had won between the two cardinals, Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki. Though only these recent happenings in Kenya have caught the eyes of international players, looking back at her past reveals a history of deep rooted ethnic divides and violence in what many call a ‘democratic’ or ‘multiparty’ nation-state. It thus important to historicize the link between ethnicity and nationalism in the context of broader changes brought about by multipartyism. ²

Dating as far back as the era of Jomo Kenyatta (1^st president) politics in Kenya took an ethnic turn which has persisted to date as witnessed in the 2007 general elections. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, favored policies that benefited his people and was openly tribal in his cabinet appointments ensuring that all competitive leaders from rival tribes were downplayed. For instance, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the then vice-president was dubiously fired and politically sabotaged in 1966 for openly speaking against Kenyatta’s policies whereas Tom Mboya, a leading Luo nationalist was assassinated in mid 1969. In the same year, multiparty politics was abolished. Oginga Odinga resurfaced after the re-introduction of multiparty politics in 1992 chair of Ford Kenya where he became a member of parliament as a result of overwhelming votes from the Luo who wanted favors from the government through him. Arap Moi succeeded Jomo Kenyatta in 1979 and instituted equally ethnic-based policies that led to an attempted coup in 1982. The Kalenjin tribe in the Rift Valley became core beneficiaries of his presidency and held key positions in government. ³

The voting patterns in 1991 and in the later 1997 elections were similar, presidential candidates represented different ethnic regions associated with the respective parties KANU-Arap Moi, DP-Mwai Kibaki, NDP-Raila Odinga, SDP-Charity Ngilu, Ford Kenya-Kijana Wamalwa. Elections therefore represented the interests of an ethnic group as opposed to that of a political party. Post election violence and ethnic cleansing is not new to Kenya as the international media may have portrayed it to the unknowing world. 1997 elections saw KANU politicians led by the then president Arap Moi launch a campaign to liquidate the opposition.² President Moi’s political rallies were punctuated with the Swahili phrase siasa mbaya, maisha mbaya(bad politics, bad life), interpreted as, those pro-KANU will be rewarded and those against will face consequences. Communities like the Luo-Kisii, Luo-Kuria and Marakwet-Nandi were pitted against each other resulting in cattle rustling, looting, abduction and rape. In 1998 the Kikuyu tribe in Narok and West Pokot districts (KANU strongholds)were attacked as punishment for not voting for KANU candidates whereas they were gaining economic benefits as a result of the large support KANU was getting in the area. These acts of violence were however never probed into for fear of the consequences from the government.

Following the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya that saw over 1000 deaths and over 500,000 people displaced from their homes, a Review Commission chaired by Justice Johann Kriegler was chartered by the African Union to look into what went wrong, why it went wrong and to provide recommendations.⁶ The recommendations brought forth after months of interviews and meetings, suggested persecution of perpetrators of crime during the election among other reforms in government. As of August 2009 parliament had not reached a general consensus on the means to use in persecuting offenders cited in the Waki report⁵ (as it was popularly known). Many claimed the judicial system in Kenya was highly compromised and would not provide a fair trial for the higher ranking government officials rumored to be in the report, a claim that is indeed justifiable. On October 1, 2009 however, the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Mutula Kilonzo announced that the government would hand over the election suspects to the International Court of Justice.⁴ There has been a lot of speculation on who is mentioned in the ‘Waki report’ since many ethnic communities are at risk of losing key political leaders were they to be prosecuted and that is translated as a loss of representation of their interests in matters of policy and compromise in their allocation of the national cake.

Currently, Kenya is battling with famine and drought that has crippled the country and is gradually taking lives. After a dubious deal involving a politician resulted in selling most of its food reserved for drought and famine, Kenya has now been forced to import food as well as ask for food aid. It is hoped that justice will be served to the offenders presented to the ICC over the pre and post election violence and that this will result in a chance for new leaders to come up who will try to unite the people of the country, define new policies that are nationalist as opposed to ethnic based and generally bring about development in the country.

References

1. BBC World Service Trust. 2009. Policy briefing. 1, (April 2009).

2. Bethwell A. Ogot. Ethnicity, nationalism and the shaky foundation of political multipartyism in Kenya: The colonial origins. In , 65.

3. Chweya Ludeki. 2002. Ethnicity in multiparty electoral politics. In Electoral politics in Kenya. Vol. 1, 86.

4. Nation Media Group Kenya. Nation newspaper. 2009 Available from http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/666678/- /ungjsn/-/index.html.

5. Review Commission on 2007 Elections in Kenya. 2009. WAKI report.

6. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Failed elections: Kenya’s vicious cycle 2009 Available from http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1417&categoryid=09B6EA4D-65BF-E7DC-4C0EA75B9941445B&fuseaction=topics.events_item_topics&event_id=532287.